“Fabulous” Fabio Petroni makes it to the final

"Fabulous" Fabio Petroni (ITA) defeated David Alcaide (ESP) after a tough fight with 11:9.

Petroni got the better start in the match and lived up to his earlier performance. He creamed Tomasz Kaplan (POL) with 11:7 in the quarter-final. Alcaide had to go the full distance and slightly won with 11:10 over Albin Ouschan. Maybe that was one of the reasons why Petroni left the impression to be more focussed and more ambitious than Alcaide. The Spaniard played far below his possibilities in the semi-final and missed unusually many balls. Still, Alcaide could keep the match open for six racks to a score of 3:3. Then, Petroni benefitted from Alcaide's mistakes and got a 6:3 lead. Alcaide tried to stay in the game but his performance was simply not good enough against Petroni. After 17 racks, Petroni was on the hill leading 10:7. Then, Alcaide went down to the wire and won another two racks to come to a 9:10. However, Petroni kept his nerves together and won the final rack, taking the match with 11:9

The second semi-final match between Nick van den Berg (NED) and Radoslaw Babica (POL) was by far not as thrilling due to the many mistakes that Babica committed. He missed four easy shots in the early stage of the match and never recovered from that. Van den Berg consequently capitalized from that and got an advantage that Babica could not close anymore. In the end, one got the feeling that Babica had already given up. 11:3 was the clear end-result in favour of van den Berg.

Results Quarter-final matches:

Results Semi-final matches:

The final match between Fabio Petroni and Nick van den Berg will begin at 20:30 CET.

The event is hosted by the European Governing Body for Pool, the European Pocket Billiard Federation (EPBF) and organized by International Billiard Promotion (IBP). For further information and reference please go to the federation website www.europeanopenonline.eu , follow us on twitter @EPBF_News or contact our press office.